- [Yia] A single ingredient tells a story.

- [John] This is beautiful.

- [Yia] About a person.

- My dad used to make this.

- [Yia] A place.

- Smells like home.

- [Yia] A culture.

- So if we lose this, then we lose everything.

- I'm Chef Yia Vang.

- That's awesome.

- I just want to impress my Puerto Rican auntie, you know.

Step into the kitchen with local chefs.

Oh my gosh.

As we relish the cuisines and cultures of our neighbors.

(cheerful music) In this episode, traditional Guatemalan ingredients are at the heart of Amalia Moreno-Damgaard's Mayan Stew.

Heather Jansz has us put down our fork, to dig into the colorful cuisine of Sri Lanka.

But first, we head to the fish market with John Sugimura to find the perfect piece of salmon.

How are you doing brother?

- [John] Good.

Do you like salmon?

- [Yia] I love salmon.

- [John] We're gonna do an old school salmon dish with home-brewed soy.

We're gonna put it on crispy rice.

We're gonna serve it with some dumplings.

(upbeat music) - [Yia] I'm really, really excited.

(bell dings) - Look at this.

This is beautiful.

- [Yia] When you're looking for a piece of fish, like, what are you looking for?

- So for salmon, I'm looking for the biggest loin.

Because when I clean it up and break it down, I wanna have a nice big three and a half inch slice, 'cause we're gonna be doing sashimi.

And you know, the truth is, I don't even like salmon.

- Oh, really?

- But I love fish.

When you take a good piece of fish and you make it better with doing lots of interesting things, so we're gonna cure it.

So it's gonna take away the greasiness.

It's gonna firm up the loin.

It's gonna pop the color.

And then when we hit it with a torch, we're gonna give it texture.

And you have that aroma of the salmon, now I'm down with it.

I like that one right there.

See how thick that loin is right there?

'Cause that's what we're gonna be eating on.

Perfect.

We'll take the whole thing.

When you touch fish, you are doing old traditions.

You're doing things like your grandparents did.

You're doing things like their grandparents did.

That's why fish is so special to me because it represents my Japanese heritage.

Thank you very much.

This is beautiful.

Have a good day.

(cheerful music) - Can I open it?

- Yeah.

- It's like it's Christmas.

(paper rustling) We have this salmon, whole fillet of salmon.

So we're probably looking at just under three pounds of Ora King.

Ora King being number one grade, being what you want to do when you go into your fishmonger saying, "What's sushi grade," or "What's the number one grade?"

Here's the head.

Here's the loin, tail.

Here's the belly for what we're doing today.

We're gonna concentrate just on the loin.

It has skin on.

I have them leave it on 'cause I like to trim it down myself.

You can ask a fishmonger to trim it down.

- And you can also ask them to take out the pin bone.

- Yep.

And we had them take out the pin bones, just so we didn't have to work that hard.

- Yep.

- So this is easy to break this down.

I'm gonna break it down into a saku, which is about the width of my hand.

We're gonna go down and I'm gonna cut right through the loin and the belly.

- So your knife here looks a little different than most chef knives at home.

- So this is a Japanese knife exclusively used for cutting fish.

It's a unagi knife.

A Japanese knife is sharp on one side, a Western knife is sharp on both sides, - Double bevel.

Single bevel.

Yep.

- I love to start with this one.

So again, skin, bloodline, loin, belly, a little bit of extra fiber right in the middle.

So I'm gonna scoop the loin out, scoop the belly out.

And then I'm gonna flip it, before I get to the end so I can trim off and I don't get that extra fiber right there.

So there's the loin.

I'm gonna turn it around.

I'm gonna go on the other side of the fiber.

- [Yia] Where did you learn how to do this?

- [John] So I did everything I could on my own.

I watched all the YouTube videos.

I bought the sushi kits.

I took cooking classes and then I hit the wall and then I'd realized that it was really important to me to identify with my Japanese-American heritage and I thought, what better way than to take a really interesting tool like cooking to kind of tell my story.

I literally make cured salmon so that people can learn about the Japanese-American experience.

Just like having a restaurant or cooking for a group of 10 people.

That's 10 people that are on the same page with you, that accept you for who you are.

Accept you for being a marginalized group.

We all have that one private story where a kid in eighth grade made sure he was gonna make me feel marginalized and call me a Jap.

- [Yia] Yup.

- And make me know the pain and the sting of you're different and you're not the majority.

And I knew from that point on that the world would see me as different.

I knew that I looked different.

I knew that I had a different story.

My story is that I'm half Japanese, half German.

My grandmother was a chef when she came over from Japan to California in 1917.

And she ran a restaurant as a single parent with five kids all the way up until the war.

Women didn't do that in the 20s and 30s.

Women didn't do that.

And women weren't successful, but she was.

- Let alone like in America, as an immigrant, you know.

- Exactly.

Exactly.

So I literally do this so I can tell you and talk about my grandmother.

- That's amazing.

- And I've told you this before.

I don't love salmon, but I love good fish.

So take a salmon.

We're gonna cure it.

Curing means that we're going to lightly put salt covering the whole thing, two hours and 45 minutes.

Not two hours and 50 minutes, and not two hours and 40 minutes.

- Where did you learn that timing?

- It comes from my master teacher, Katsuya.

You follow the recipe he's been doing for decades.

You don't tinker.

You don't tinker.

- Don't question master.

- He taught me everything I needed to do so that I would celebrate old techniques and methods.

So watch.

The higher I hold this up, the more it shatters over the loin.

And 'cause you don't want it to be too heavy because it will actually like burn the fish.

You want your protein to be pristine.

So I feel that's good.

And it's just, it's the easiest thing ever.

And bam, you're done.

So then, fast forward, two hours 45 minutes, I'm gonna rinse these off a good couple of times.

Rinsing is critical.

Do a quick dry.

Loin, loin.

- So we cured it.

- Belly.

- Rinsed it off.

- Yup.

- Dry it out.

- Yup.

Yup.

- And now we're ready to go?

- Yup.

Literally, it's that easy to cure a fish.

- We're ready to roll.

Is there a special way you want to slice this?

- [John] I'm gonna start on the bias and I'm just gonna go real thin.

Everything that people criticize salmon about, curing takes care of it.

It's greasy.

It gets rid of it.

It's not firm enough.

It firms it up.

- [Yia] Yeah and you could totally tell just the texture of the fish is different.

- In my opinion, nobody should eat raw, uncured salmon.

It's just too rich for most people.

So we have all that sliced-up salmon.

What we want to do is build it.

We're gonna put crispy rice.

We're gonna put a slice of salmon on it.

We're gonna brush it with the home-brewed soy.

We're gonna serve it with some dumplings.

So let's move some of these over here.

- So we just sear.

You seared those off?

- Yup.

Yup.

It has regular sushi rice.

It has the vinegar, sugar, salt in it.

We dip it in soy sauce to give it a little bit of salt.

What you're gonna notice is the salmon's almost like a bedspread on it.

- [Yia] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- Yeah.

So that you see more salmon than you see anything else.

That's exactly what we're going for.

Isn't that beautiful?

- Yeah.

It looks great.

So here's the deal.

I would just eat it like that.

- You think that's good?

How about if we put a little bit of homemade soy sauce on it?

That's really gonna enhance everything in the fish without overwhelming it.

And then the most fun.

- Yup.

This is what everyone lives for.

- So what I'm not gonna do is move it all around 'cause we're not cooking the fish.

We're giving it a light sear to bring out all the oil and give it a little char to add another level of texture to it.

So I'll do this one.

- And that helps caramelize that soy also.

- Exactly.

It's just awesome.

I'll finish these three and then we'll dress it up.

All as I do is put a smudge of wasabi on top and a pinch of scallions.

- So here we are, everything's finished.

It's simple.

This is so simple because there's not a lot of ingredients in it, you know.

- It's pristine.

It's pure.

- Yeah.

Yup.

And just really good technique just using great technique.

And it looks delicious.

- It's all about the technique.

Let's plate it up.

I don't have many prized possessions, but this is one of them.

So this is my grandmother's plate from the restaurant circa 1920-ish.

- Wow.

- Yes.

- Tell us a little bit more about it.

- So it's, I don't know if it's a great plate, I just know that this is the plate that she would make plates of food and share it with the neighbors.

And so to know that my grandmother in her restaurant in Sacramento, California in the 20s and 30s was making food and plating it up literally as we're doing it today.

Really, as it's almost an emotional thing.

And that's why I like to share it.

So let me go ahead and build it up with some seared salmon.

Do you know why I use purple cabbage?

- [Yia] I don't know.

- All of my elders are gone, but they all said grandma put something crunchy as a garnish under the dumplings.

They're all gone.

I'll never know what that was.

My dad could never remember it.

There are no written recipes, but I really do use purple cabbage under it for the crunch, but it's also that pop of color, every day, every dish, I get that gentle reminder of grandma.

Every single aspect of everything on this plate, including the plate is telling part of the story.

The part of the story that my grandmother, my aunts and uncles, my dad were in war camps in Northern California.

Lost everything, lost a business, lost a house, everything, to come out four and a half years and start all over.

There's a Japanese term called Gaman, which means, okay you're out of the camp, get over it.

Don't be a victim, smile and move on.

Well, you know what?

They did.

Everybody moved on.

They didn't talk about the war camp in my family until I was like 16 years old, when I'm like, "No, no, no.

I need to know more.

Help me understand."

I mean, they really just moved on.

And so, this is my way to again to talk about and bring all those things forward.

And that's kind of what I live and stand by.

Actually to break the Gaman history.

Tell the story, tell as much information, tell it through food, tell it on a great platter and everything like that and keep it simple, but keep it real.

- Trying this looks so delicious.

I'm so excited to try this.

- Enjoy that salmon, cured, seared, crispy rice cake.

- I love that salmon.

One of my favorite things about it is that quick sear at the end.

Every step has the flavor.

There's a reason for putting the crispy rice in the soy.

Like every step has a little flavor.

Even just that little wasabi.

There's that little spice, that little kick.

- Just a little bit.

Just a little bit.

Great food that can tell a great story really is interesting.

- How did you get so captivated by this whole idea of like telling us stories through food?

- You know, I've been doing food for like 10 years.

Prior to going to school, it was in 1996, that my mom called me home from work.

I cooked for her.

I cooked for her a pork chop, but she called me home to spend time together, doing something normal, like eating.

That's all she wants.

She didn't eat the pork chop either.

And she died a few hours later.

- [Yia] Oh man.

- But that's when I understood what food could do.

What a great thing that she had the courage to ask for a pork chop that day and I could spend that moment with her.

Food.

There's no other.

I can't think of one other tool like this, that can do that kind of powerful healing, that kind of powerful relationship, interaction with your mom in her last day.

And I'm forever grateful for that.

- Just as food can connect people, it can also connect you to a place.

As we learn from Amalia Moreno-Damgaard.

- I was born in Guatemala City.

I was very young.

About eight years old when I started getting exposure to the kitchen.

My grandmother was a master chef in my eyes because she made everything from scratch.

Those are the childhood memories that I have cooking in the kitchen, helping her.

I learned a lot of techniques without really knowing that there were techniques.

Sometimes when we live in our home countries, we take things for granted and we don't really realize how beautiful and how valuable those things are.

When you leave home, many of those memories stay with you, in your heart, in your head, but for me, not only the memories are there, but also the flavors.

The flavors are in my head.

The flavors are in my tongue.

(upbeat music) I'm making a dish from my home country called Jocon.

It's a Mayan stew and it is a green stew.

So all the ingredients, except for the chicken, are green.

Guatemalan cuisine is not yet known very well outside Guatemala.

It's fresh.

It's vibrant.

It's mild.

The traditional ingredients are corn and legumes, red tomatoes and tomatillos and chili peppers.

Even though we use a combination of dry peppers and fresh peppers, the cuisine is not really spicy.

One of the ways I continue to educate myself is travel because that allows me to get closer to the food and culture of other countries.

And for me, the way to learn is to cook with regular people.

So I seek out home cooks, grandmas and anyone that is an avid cook, and that has a passion for cooking.

You know, whether I am in a commercial kitchen or I am in a barn, you can produce good food by having good ingredients, fresh ingredients.

And just having a little bit of knowledge.

My goal is to shed a positive light and to share how beautiful and how wonderful Latin America is, and spread the good word about Latin American cooking and culture.

Buen provecho!

(cheerful acoustic music) (upbeat music) - [Heather] Oh my God.

- [Yia] This looks so delicious.

- This is the rainbow in your mouth, the burst of everything.

- We're in the kitchen today with The Curry Diva herself, Heather Jansz.

Heather, thank you so much for being here with us.

- Thank you.

- Let's get to know you a little bit.

- I was born and raised in Sri Lanka.

It's a little island off the very bottom tip of India.

So a lot of people think it's part of India, but it isn't.

So we call it the Pearl of the Indian Ocean.

There's a lot of different cultures in Sri Lanka.

I am the third minority group.

So we have the Sinhalese and the Tamils, and then we have the Portuguese Dutch, which is what I am, a Portuguese Dutch Burgher, not hamburger.

(Yia chuckles) That's my heritage.

And so food is like, for us, a celebration every single day just like it is probably for you.

- So what are we making today?

- Well, I thought I would make something really traditional.

We're gonna make curried lentil, which is what we call dhal.

And then something green called a mallung with toasted coconut.

- Right now, we're gonna start with the lentils, right?

- Yes.

- What are the first steps we're doing here?

- Okay, so we're just gonna cut an onion and show you how to pop these mustard seeds.

It's super simple.

And once it gets going, it's only gonna take like about seven minutes.

We want the pan to be just a little bit warm, 'cause what I want it to do is to pop these.

So in about two... - These are the mustard seeds?

- These are the brown mustard seeds.

So you just toss a bunch of them in there.

They're starting to get a little wiggly and you'll hear them like little popcorn things, they'll start to pop.

Most of the stuff that I make, you know, activates all six senses: sweet, sour, salt, bitter, pungent, and astringent.

And in one of my meals, it activates all of those six.

Otherwise, we have that sitting dormant.

It's starting to pop right now.

- Oh, you can actually see it.

- Yeah.

They're popping the sweet, sour and salt gets activated pretty much every day in most diets, but you want the others too, which is your bitter greens, your spices, your legumes, you know, those kinds of things.

These brown mustard seeds is also, you know, in that pungent part of the spices.

So I'm gonna cook this with ghee and it's gonna be kind of rich, right, with the ghee.

You can use whatever you like.

And so while this is popping, and getting all toasty and wonderful, I'm usually gonna throw in a little bit of like the pandan leaf.

I'll just cut some of that in there.

And these are Ceylon cinnamon sticks.

So they come from Sri Lanka.

So they say that, you know, if you can't make that crumble like that in your hand, then it's the cassia.

Can you smell that?

- So this is totally different from the cinnamon stick that we get here in America.

- That's right.

That is cassia sticks.

- Yup.

This is so much more fragrant.

- I know.

And just crush it, get all the flavor you want, plop it in there like that so that the oil catches a bit of it as well.

And at that point, you're gonna throw in my little dream.

- With the curry leaf, it's kind of like bay leaf.

- [Heather] Right.

- Oh, I'm sitting here and I can smell all of that.

- [Heather] I know.

It's so good.

- You know, it's nutty, it's toasty.

- So what we do is we take all the spices and we roast them and that releases the oils.

And the oils are then what you're getting, like in your food and in your body.

So I'm gonna put the lentils in right now, after all the spices got all toasty in there.

So at this point, I add the rich, the really rich coconut cream and then my water.

And typically that's all it is.

It's really simple.

And you want to add, it's just so funny 'cause my mom and I asked her, "How much water mom?"

And she would be like, "Oh, up to there."

And I'm like.

- Did she?

The finger, the finger method.

- Yeah, yeah.

So is your finger, what?

I don't get it.

Okay, fine.

- When we first learned how to make rice, that was it.

- Same thing.

Me too.

- It was, it was this knuckle right here.

The pinky.

But it doesn't matter whose finger or hands it is.

It still works all the time.

- Does it?

- Same method we use.

Same methods we use.

- This is gonna cook up in like six to seven minutes.

And if you add more water, than you think you might need because they expand, it's like a rice obviously, to like three times more the size and then you just cook it on full.

And right before you take it down, you add the salt to taste.

- [Yia] Was your family an influence in your cooking?

- Yes.

So my mother was a big influence.

I started to cook when I was really little, on three brick stones with the firewood that I would have to find.

And my first thing I remember cooking was the lentils, you know.

- You just put the pot on top, water, boil.

- Yeah.

It's a little clay pot, brought my own water.

And then sometimes, if there was something growing in the garden, I could experiment with those too.

I would watch her.

And then I would go try to do that outside, you know.

And she'd give me little bits of spices 'cause you couldn't waste anything, you know.

And then she'd say, "Okay, bring it in.

Let's try it."

It feels like I come from like the stone ages, but it is how they did it.

You know?

So that was fun.

So I have vivid memories of making things like that.

So it's pretty much done at this point.

So the stove's turned off, and that's what it's supposed to look like.

And I added the salt towards the end and it's perfect as is, ready to go.

It'll suck up some of that water as well.

- So how the lentils are done.

That was really quick.

- I told you, right?

- Yeah.

And so we're gonna let that sit for a minute.

- Yeah.

- What's the next thing we're making here?

- So we call it a mallung.

And a mallung, technically means greens that's chopped up, toasted with coconut and spices.

So that even if you're not a person that loves greens, you will probably eat greens this way.

- How about I help you chop up some kale?

- Okay do that.

Yeah.

- Is that okay?

- Yeah.

Just chop it up fine.

So with some of the greens that we make, it's not always a kale.

The greens that we have in Sri Lanka are probably similar to the ones that you've had.

So we have kankung, which is like the hollow vegetable.

We have something called mukunuwenna.

We have something called swamp cabbage.

It's all those kinds of different things.

But technically, it ends up being a green.

- So Heather, we have everything ready.

What are the first steps?

- We're gonna throw in some onions, some of the spices, a little bit of garlic, some fresh curry leaves.

And if you don't have curry leaves, you know, you can always use like some sage or something.

Don't stress that you don't have that, but they're very good for you if you do have them.

Start with some of the rice bran oil.

Again, I'm gonna throw these in there and let them pop a little bit.

So I'm a garlic lover.

This is gonna look like a lot, but it isn't.

- Also, you have to realize too that we're using a lot of kale.

It's, you know, absorb all that flavor.

- Right.

So once those, the garlic is all toasty.

You throw in the onion, coriander and cumin.

You put a little bit of that in and you want it toasting into the oil part.

Because we like hot, I'm gonna put some pepper.

Is that okay?

- Fine.

Definitely.

- Well, most of it.

And then toast that in there.

And now at this point, you just throw in the kale.

I'm gonna do all of this because it shrinks down to nothing.

- [Yia] Absolutely.

This is super simple.

Now watch.

See all those toasty bits in the bottom?

That's kinda yummy.

Then you have to salt.

And at the very end, you're throwing in the toasted coconut.

- And I like that coconut because it brings a little kind of counterbalance to the heat, right?

- It does.

- To the chilies.

- 'Cause there's that, little sweetness.

- Little sweetness, yup.

A natural sweetness in there.

- Yup.

And so basically, that is it.

It's done.

Our food, when it's served, it's like a little rainbow.

So you have rice and you have the colors.

There you eat, what's in season.

So you get your squash, and your beets, and all that kind of stuff, but always a green and always the lentil.

- So Heather, what do we have here?

- Oh my god.

- This looks so delicious.

- [Heather] So we have the turmeric-infused rice in the middle, the lentils, the mallung, brussel sprouts, green beans, pickled eggplant, squash, and then there's beets.

- [Yia] Incredible.

And then we have the chutney in the middle.

- Yep.

Fig chutney there in the middle.

And then that's the other one for you to sample, and then that's your hot and this is a pickled radish.

- And normally, we just eat this with our hands.

- Right.

- Is there a certain technique that you do?

- Yes.

Will you do it with me?

- Absolutely.

- Okay, all right.

So you kind of get yourself a little space, right?

And you start with the rice.

So you want the rice to be your base.

So you're starting with the rice and you're using your fingers, but you're trying to not get it in this area.

Okay?

So this particular bite, I want a little bit of lentils, maybe a little bit of that, some of that.

So you're making yourself this, this fun little mouth right here, and then you're gonna pick it up like this, and then you have this whole thing right here, and you're gonna go.

- This is incredible.

Because all the flavors, it's like you're creating yourself the perfect bite.

- [Heather] I know.

- And that's so, so delicious.

- This is the rainbow in your mouth, right?

The burst of everything.

- Growing up, was this how you guys ate?

- Maybe in one meal, we didn't get every single one of these, but like four of those and a meat or not a meat.

But we always have these on the side, always.

- Here in the Midwest, not a lot of people eat with their hands or they, you know, they consider that wrong.

Well growing up, where you and I come from, eating with your hands, I mean, I always joke, this is my fork, this is my spoon, you know, let's go at it.

- It's really true.

- And so, that's what we had.

And you just ate with your hands.

- When I dig into something like this, especially with my fingers, the first thing I think about is like running into the kitchen, trying to see what my mom's made for the night.

And then all these memories of childhood, you know, and me learning how to cook the dhal when I was little, it just all comes racing back.

So I love it.

- Do you know we have recipes for all the dishes featured on Relish?

Check them out on our website, tptoriginals.org/relish.

(bell dings) - Look at, but you did perfect.

Look at, you didn't get any, look at.

- Not my first rodeo.

We've done this before.

- [Staff] What is perfect, what did you mean?

- I said, look at, he didn't even get it on his palm.

He did it so well, you know.

(upbeat music)